Heat-beating businessman
awaits a Brisbane tram in
shorts and walking socks
typical attire in an easygoing
city where summer tempera
tures frequently reach into the
90's. Business deals often ripen
in air-conditioned bars.
Layer cake of glass, Bris
bane's Tower Mill Motel blinks
alight at dusk. Tourism booms
as a big business in Queens
land: Australians and foreign
ers flock to its golden beaches,
teeming reefs, and pleasant
tropical towns.
richly endowed region is the inland plain
called the Darling Downs.
Not until 1827 did explorer Allan Cunning
ham discover the Downs. Despite his enthusi
astic report on the area's richness and beauty,
densely forested mountains deterred home
steaders for more than a decade. The settlers
of the Southern Continent were slow to ven
ture in from the coast, preferring at first to
nibble nervously at the edges of the great
unknown.
Today the Darling Downs ("Darling" is not
an adjective but the name of an early gover
nor) have been transformed into a neat agri
cultural mosaic. Most of their geometrically
perfect fields are planted to wheat and barley,
silver-gold at harvest time. Combines were
cutting dead-straight swaths across the land
as I drove out to visit one of the Downs farm
ers, Sandy Speed.
Sandy's surname suited him well: Wherever
he went, he ran. I galloped with him to a pass
ing combine and climbed aboard it to have a
look at the barley pouring into its hopper.
"Could be better," he opined. "Would be,
too, if we'd had normal rain. We've got up to
forty feet of topsoil here, and it hasn't needed
fertilizer yet. At least we'll get a crop off it."
"How much of it do you own?" I asked.
"Not much, about 2,700 acres. You'll see
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